While You Were Gone
by Darth Amidala
Summary: Luke Skywalker is not saved by his father, but a Jedi that happens to be his mother. This is intended have a lot of angst. QUESTION INSIDE! END OF CHAPTER 3, CAN'T UPDATE UNTIL ANSWERED
1. Chapter 1

I'm battling with my father to the death, and that is not right.

It's all I can think, and I shouldn't. I need to focus on the battle at hand.

No, that's not what I need to do, I need to end this madness...

I run over and hide, not wanting to admit to cowardice but instead telling myself that it's _strategy. _Vader seems to be talking but I block this out. I close my eyes and think of home. I don't have a , home is where my friends are, with Han and Chewie and Lando and Leia...

_Leia. _I feel and array of feelings coming towards me, and I'm confused for a moment, then remember what passed on Endor. My sister is down there, my new found sister-

"If you will not turn to the dark side-" please, no no no no " than perhaps she will."

Oh, the fury of the moment and tearful desperation consumes me and I lash out. I run screaming towards that creature who happens to be my father, or a useless shell of a man who was my father.

I ignite my lightsaber and scream in anger, rushing at him with a frenzy I haven't felt before.. Sparks fly as Vader and I fight in the cramped area.

My hatred forces Vader to retreat out of the low area and across a bridge overlooking avast elevator shaft. Each stroke of my sword drives my  
father further toward defeat.

The Dark Lord is knocked to his knees, and as he raises his sword to block another onslaught, I slash Vader's right hand of fat the wrist, causing metal and electronic parts to fly from the mechanical stump.

Vader's sword clatters uselessly away, over the edge of the platform and into the bottomless shaft below.

I move over Vader and holds the blade of his sword to my father's throat. The Emperor watches with uncontrollable, pleased agitation.

"Good! Your hate has made you powerful." The emperor cackled. I had forgotten about him for a moment. Now, fulfill your destiny and take your father's place at my side!"He gloats.

I look at his father's mechanical hand, then to my own mechanical, black-gloved hand, and realize how much I am becoming like my father. I make the decision for which I have spent a lifetime in preparation - I step back and hurl my light saber away.

"Never!" I yell. "I'll never turn to the dark side.  
You've failed, Your Highness. I am a Jedi,  
like my father before me."

The Emperor's glee turns to rage.

"So be it, _Jedi._"

* * *

Blinding bolts of energy, evil lightning, shoot from the Emperor's hands at me. Even in my surprise, I try to use the Force to deflect them.

At first I am half successful, but after a moment the bolts of energy are coming with such speed and power I shrink before them, my knees buckling. My wounded father struggles to his feet, and moves to stand at his master's side.

"Father!" I scream, writhing helplessly. "Father, help me!"

I am almost unconscious beneath the continuing assault of the Emperor's lightning. I clutch a canister to keep from falling into the bottomless shaft as the bolts tear through me.

Then, suddenly, it stops.

I wait for the Emperor's taunts. But nothing comes. I force my eyes open through the resounding pain, but all is hazy.

Then I hear a scream, a low one. The scream turns into a moan, and finally it dies off.

When I can see a little, I almost can't believe it. Standing there examining the Emperor's hazy form is Leia, with a light saber in hand.

"Leia?" I ask feebly.

She turns to me, and it's not my sister. She smiles warmly at me. "No, not Leia, she says softly, walking towards me. She kneels next to me. "My name is Padme."


	2. Chapter 2

For a moment I think she might help me up, and Padme readily reaches down to do so. Then she turns around to Vader, and I am forgotten.

She stands up and retrieves her fallen lightsaber with inhuman speed.

"Vader," She hisses angrily as her lightsaber crackles to life again.

My father moves from his frozen position. "Padme?" He asked in a choked voice."

"Do not use my name." Her words drip malice. "You aren't fit to say anyone's name."

"Padme..." He repeats sorrowfully. "What happened to you?"

Padme glares at him with hate. " I don't know what you mean. I don't know you, I never knew you."

Vader falls to his knees in what feels like...remorse. I am momentarily shocked that I am not paralyzed in pain anymore. So I feel what he's thinking. And I'm shocked again.

I feel no darkness. I even feel love. And... sadness, grief, heartbreak, remorse, a thousand things. A thousand things under that mask that the galaxy never saw.

"Is this... my punishment? Is your hate my punishment for what I've done?" He's...crying. The Sith lord is crying.

"No, your punishment," She screams, "_would_ be death!" She throws her blue light saber at him, missing it's mark. I have a feeling if she had wanted to hit him, she would have.

"But that would just be anybody in the galaxy's punishment. I want you to feel the pain, the agony of what I've gone through!" Her eyes are dangerously on the brink of yellow with rage.

Then she calms down for a moment. "But that was just what I thought until I came in and saw you battling my **SON!** MY VERY OWN FLESH AND BLOOD!"

Tears of rage are pouring down her face what she has just said registers painfully. I realize why she looks so much like Leia. That's my first thought.

My second thought is that she hates my father. My parents hate each other.

But no, that's not true. My mother hates my father, but the love I felt in my father's mind was for her.

But I don't think she knows that, she's to angry to feel anything.

She walks over and leans over Vader who is suddenly very still.

To still.

My mother kneels next to him and forces him to look at her.

"Let's begin," she says gently, "on Naboo, thirty two years ago."

I sense my father slowly feeling something, like a drug. A wave of unrest washes over him. Anxiousness blossoms in the pit of his stomach. In the back of his mind, he is scared. These aren't his feelings. Loneliness, sorrow and fear take him over.

_I will not defer...I have come before you to resolve __this attack on our sovereignty now. I was not elected to watch my people __suffer and die while you discuss this invasion in a committee!_

I see my flashes of my mother- I don't know how I know- screaming these words at a man in the senate.

"Now, let's move to twenty-two years ago, where a nexu clawed me in the back-"

_The nexu's claws dig deep into the post. The cat-like creature reaches the top of the post and takes a swipe at her. She turns and the claw barely catches her shirt ripping it off, leaving superficial claw marks across her back. She hits the creature with her chain and it backs off down the pole. Then, she jumps off the post into the air. She swings around on the chain and whacks the beast hard on the head with both her feet. It tumbles back onto the sand. My mother climbs back up the pole, scrambling to the top._

Much more physical pain arches through his body. It feels like he's being burned alive.

Just like this, my mother releases more and more pains on to him and he won't move.

She's making him relive every single pain she's felt...

The pain continues- It's not physical pain mostly, it's pain from the heart, the aching of the soul. And believe me, it hurts just as much as physical , I saw your ship . . .

They embrace.  
we want them to be.

_" I don't believe what I'm hearing . . . Obi-Wan was right. You've changed. "_

_" I don't want to hear any more about Obi-Wan. The Jedi turned against me. Don't you turn against me. _

_" I don't know you anymore. Anakin, you're breaking my heart. I'll never stop loving you, but you are going down a path I can't follow! "_

_"Because of Obi-Wan? "_

_" Because of what you've done . . . what you plan to do. Stop, stop now. Come back! I love you.!"_

_My father turns to see...Ben._

_She turns around and sees Ben standing in the doorway of the Naboo Cruiser. _

_" NO!"_

_" You're with him!" He yells." You've betrayed me! You brought him here to kill me! "_

_" NO! Anakin. I swear ... I ... "_

_My father reaches out, and she grabs her throat as she starts to choke. _

_" Let her go, Anakin. " Ben says much to calmly._

_" What have you and she been up to? " My father screams at him._

_" Let her go!" Ben yells._

_He releases his grip on my unconscious mother and she crumples to the ground. _

_" You turned her against me..." _

She squeezes her eyes shut in an effort to keep her tears contained."Now you see?" She askes softly. "And then you killed him, you killed Anakin."

Oh.

_Oh._

"Padme!" He yells, grasping on to a little ray of hope. "I didn't kill him! I..." He reaches out with the force and grasps her for a moment, then lets her go.

"I am Anakin. Not Vader. _Anakin."_

She gasps. She turns away, sobbing into her hands. "What have I done, what have I done..."


	3. Chapter 3

I'm still sitting here, immobile. The pain of the attack has passed, but pain witnessing the horror of what just happened is fresh in my soul.

My mother is silent, her body racked with quiet sobs.

I get up, undecided of who to go comfort first. My mother is in more pain, terrible, horrible pain, but something even more terrifying is that I can't feel my father's mind. Nothing at all. He's broken.

So I run to my father- Vader? Anakin?- and kneel.

My mother was in this exact same position like this, just a few moments ago. Torturing him.

"Father?" I whisper. I give him a shake. "Father, you need to get up." Gently, I remind myself that he needs to be treated carefully. The trauma is to much for him.

"Luke," his cracked voice responds. "Luke, I'm going to die."

"No- no, you can't do that- you aren't _that_ hurt!" I whimper. 'You can't die, I just found you!"

My mother seems to react at the word "die".

She turns to me and meets my eyes. She walks over to me and my father and sits down cross-legged.

"Luke, I never got to teach you anything." She said, her brown, tear stained eyes piercing through me. " I never got to see you open your eyes, see you get your first tooth, see you get your first steps. I never got to listen to you talk about pod racing or yell at you about your messy room, I never got to teach you how to properly talk to a girl, I never got to teach you about anything, never got to be a mother to you."

Silence between her and I stretches an eternity.

"But I can teach you one thing." She says matter-of-factually. "I will show you how to save your father."

She doesn't realize that I hear her last add on- _I will show you how to save your father because of I almost killed him._

* * *

I begin to go to work.

I reach out with the force and try to sense the root of the problem. A quick glance at my mother shows she is in a deeper state of meditation than me, so I squeeze my eyes shut and listen. I just listen.

I hear whispers in the back of my skull. They seem eerie, full of pain, but they aren't cruel, they are tainted with pain. This is my mother's voice.

She begins to show me, using the force and nothing else, how to heal him. We begin to go into a deep trance.

At first I feel clumsy using the force compared to my mother's graceful force touch, and I envision her as a purple mist in the force- but only for a moment. I see my father, his force signature dancing like a flame- a lean, vibrant stroke.

I feel as if I'm swimming, I feel the force around me, corresponding to my touch. I t glows, it spins, it breathes, it lives.

The glowing swells within me, and I flow with - everything. This is force, this is life.

Feeling a path, I grasp it and use it for all I'm worth. I go down the path, I travel deeper, and I bore down when it gets hard. I strain down to the roots of the path, knowing the light side. Feeling it.

Finally I break through, and I feel like I've just seen all. Known all. The fountain of youth, the all- knowing, whatever you want to call it, I've been there, and it makes me weary.

I snap out of the trance and crumple to the floor. She does the same next to me, mirror images of one another.

We lay breathing for a moment, then remember what we've attempted to do.

My father is awake.

So we help him up gently, but he doesn't need it. He waves us off, and stands for a moment. When he speaks, his voice is stronger than I've ever heard it.

"What has happened?" He asks.

I shift uncomfortably.

"Well, after.." I falter. "We healed you," I finish, not knowing what to say.

"No," he says, and shakes his head. " I mean - I feel different."

Light side affects, I think.

He intakes sharply. "No, I mean this."

He works on taking his mask off, and Mother and I rush to stop him. He shakes us off. So we wait, and finally it's all the way off.

He looks at us, and breaks into a grin.

His face is whole again.

* * *

**OK, I know this was short, but I will add on this chapter. I just wanted more reviews! And little sister, get an account!**

**Question! Review or message me! I have two choices, which do you prefer:  
**

**1. Padme being forgiving to Anakin ( after she fixes herself)**

**2. Padme and her family steamed at Anakin ( not just for Mustafar but for being a Darth!)**

**PLEASE LET ME KNOW! I CAN'T UPDATE UNTIL YOU TELL ME.  
**


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